OpenAI — the makers of ChatGPT — are planning to release a device designed by Jony Ive, the man behind the iPhone.
The leaked detail is that the device is screenless.
It’s predicted to be a portable device that can listen to and store the details and interactions of your life, then recall anything you need to know through conversation.
And it isn’t just OpenAI. Google, Meta and Amazon are all pushing in the same direction. The industry is betting that you’ll talk to AI more and tap a screen less.
This shift has already started. Search engines now answer questions directly at the top of the page, before you click anything. A screenless device is simply the next step: the answer, and nothing else.
How Can Local Businesses Prepare for Screenless Devices?
When someone asks an AI device a question, there’s no list of ten blue links to scroll through. There’s nothing to look at. There’s just an audible answer.
That answer gets pulled from the sites the AI trusts. If your information is thin, scattered or buried, you don’t get pulled. Someone else does.
To help AI understand what you do and cite you, your website needs to clearly show what you do and deliver that information efficiently.
Here are seven things your website should have to achieve this.
1. Cover All Topics
Have one page for each service, one page for each sub-service under that main service, and one page for each question related to each service.
For example, a main service might be “Bathroom Renovation.” The sub-services would be things like “Bathroom Vanity Replacement,” “Bath Installation” and “Shower Waterproofing.” A related query would be something like “How can I tell if my shower is leaking?”
The more completely you cover a topic, the more confident the AI is that you’re the authority on it.
2. Answer the Question First
For every page you have, address the needs, wants and desires of your target market as they relate to that service.
Answer the initial query early, right at the top of the page, then go into more detail section by section. Give the short answer first, then earn the reader’s time with the depth underneath it.
That clear, upfront answer is exactly the kind of thing an AI can lift and read aloud.
3. Write the Way People Talk
When someone types, they search “bathroom reno cost Perth.” When someone speaks to a device, they ask “how much does it cost to renovate a bathroom?”
Those are different. Voice queries are longer, more natural and usually phrased as full questions.
Write your headings and your content the way your customers actually ask out loud. If your page mirrors the question, it’s far more likely to become the answer.
4. Be the Source, Not the Echo
AI has no reason to cite the tenth website saying the same thing as the first nine.
If your pages just repeat the generic advice everyone else publishes, you give it nothing to grab onto. Put things on your site that only you can offer: your real prices, your process, what you’ve learned on local jobs, the specific problems you see in your area.
First-hand information beats rehashed information every time.
5. Mark Up Your Content
A person can read a page and understand it. A bot needs help.
Structured data (often called schema) labels your content so the AI knows exactly what it’s looking at: this is a service, this is the price, this is the business, these are the frequently asked questions, this is the person who wrote it.
It’s the difference between an AI guessing what your page means and an AI knowing. The clearer the labels, the easier you are to understand, trust and cite.
6. Show Who’s Behind It
AI pulls from sources it trusts, and trust comes from signals it can actually see.
A real business with a real address. Named people behind the content. Genuine reviews. An About page that proves you do this for a living. Consistent details across your website, your Google Business Profile and any directories you appear in.
Anonymous, faceless websites don’t earn citations. Show that there are real people and real experience behind the words.
7. Keep It Lean and Fast
If you have a lot of pages, you need to serve them quickly so the AI bots can index them all. Fast load times and very lean code are now a must.
The most effective way to achieve speed and lean code is through simple design.
Simple design doesn’t mean bad design. In fact, we’ve found that the best-converting websites are often beautifully simple and intuitive. Complex design forces new users to make too many decisions, which leads to inaction.
The Bottom Line
To help AI understand who you are and what you do, you need to give it clear, organised, original information for every service you provide — properly labelled, backed by real trust signals, and delivered through a lean website built on an efficient codebase.
We’ve been working on a new website system that does exactly this: comprehensive service and location structures, clean structured data and a very lean codebase. So far, the results have been promising.
More on those results soon.
